Share one Address Book among multiple users

Dec 03, '04 09:17:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

This is how to share the Address Book on a single Mac with each user of the machine. No syncing is needed -- all users will work on the same data.

  1. Have a separate partition with "Ignore permissions" checked in the Get Info box.
  2. Make sure you have synced all Address Books via import-export.
  3. Copy the Address Book folder you want to use as the master from /Users -> user_name -> Library -> Application Support to the other partition.
  4. Delete the original folder for each user (after verifying the copy), and make a symbolic link from the new location of the master Address Book folder. Symbolic links are made in the Terminal: ln -s path_origin path_alias.
  5. For each additional user: Delete the original folder and make a symbolic link.
This works on networks, too. But it is very slow when searching. My strategy for syncing the network (three macs, four users): My Address Book on my personal Mac is the master. Every new or changed entry on another Mac is dragged to a group called "New." Once in a while, I export the new entries to the master Address Book and check them. After that, I zip the Address Book folder and install them on the other Macs. The symbolic links will still work.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]

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